Media Perspective: Take care of your IT department and IT will take care of you

The saddest, and most telling thing anyone said to me was: "No-one ever
calls to say: 'Thanks, e-mail was up all day.'" And in those 12 words is
a story of the abuse and neglect of some of the most important people in
your agency: the IT department.

In most advertising agencies, the IT department is lodged somewhere
between "people to blame when stuff doesn't work", "butt of all the
jokes" and "necessary evil". The geek jokes abound, the heavy sighs and
moans emerge the minute anything goes wrong and their good advice is
routinely ignored. And it's almost always because they're employed to do
one thing, then asked to do something completely different.

Most agency IT people are hired to make sure nothing goes wrong. E-mail
needs to be up. Printers need to work. The billing system needs to print
the invoices properly. The media needs to get booked. And that's all
pretty simple stuff; it's all do-able. It means making sure all systems
are stable, everything's thoroughly tested, and no-one clicks on
anything stupid.

But, of course, that's not where it ends. As soon as that's all working,
the agency starts demanding stuff that will undermine it. Art directors
want Macs, so now there's something else to support. People are
constantly trying to install new browsers and new versions of Flash.
People click on the most obvious viruses every day. The managing
director wants to run PowerPoint on his iPhone. And whenever you merely
suggest this might be either a) impossible or b) likely to weaken the
integrity of the network, you get more eye-rolling and sighs. Which is a
shame, because a positive, empowered, frequently consulted IT department
could be a significant strategic resource for the average communications
agency.

Let's face it, you want all your people completely immersed in the
applications and tools that everyone out there in the world is using.
You don't want them to have to go home to look at Facebook or log on to
a different machine to look at Flickr. Do stuff like that and the
digital agencies won't just eat your lunch: they'll make you wash up
afterwards. You want an environment where people can install stuff on
their machines so they can understand it, before their client asks them
to explain it.

That means reaching a different understanding with IT, making it clear
that you'll accept a slightly higher level of risk in order to get your
business fully soaked in the digital age. That means using them as a
positive strategic asset, not another cost centre. And it means
occasionally saying "thank you" for the e-mail being up all day.